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Saturday, June 27, 2015

Easily, less than five percent of the U.S. population is homosexual. So, why is it that being pro-homosexual is advantageous for one seeking public office? I think the answer is simple. The average person is autonomous in his reasoning and is, therefore, easy prey.

Although all men know by nature that homosexuality is sin, it’s only through Scripture that one can prove in any robust, epistemic sense that it is sin. (All over this site I draw the distinction between knowledge and the justification of knowledge.) Since most Americans are autonomous in their reasoning, then it stands to reason that most Americans are incapable of justifying any moral claim they even know to be true. Recognizing that something is abnormal, even unnatural, doesn’t make it immoral, let alone something that should be deemed illegal. And if not illegal, then worthy of government protection.

Although many straight people still find homosexuality unnatural - unnatural does not imply moral deviance. God’s general revelation of sin has grown dim in the minds of most Americans, but even when it was shining more brightly, it was never to be interpreted apart from special revelation, God’s word. With the rejection of the Bible, Americans are left to grope in the dark. Christians can rejoice in at least this: God is not mocked!

Apart from invoking Scripture one is left with two unhappy alternatives. Rather than appear arbitrary and hateful toward someone who is merely different than us, the "open minded" (to everything but God's word!) are left to defend deviant behavior even when “it’s not my cup a tea.” The more noble must even fight for it! Apart from a commitment to Scripture, the only way to avoid arbitrariness and bigoted rejection of such a perversion (that comes to us under the guise of "love" and "equality" no less) is to accept it - even defend it. Apart from Scripture one is left either approving, at least tacitly, ungodly behavior or else undergoing the self-inflicted guilt of arbitrary hatred toward a practice one simply doesn't prefer. Righteous disapproval is not available to us apart from values informed by Scripture. The fool (one who rejects God's word) is confounded once again.

It takes God’s word to justify the premise that homosexuality is sin, absolutely. Yet even among those who see this plainly in God’s word, it’s only a minority who see that the practice of homosexuality should be deemed illegal.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Sanctification
is too often only thought of in terms of that process whereby a converted sinner is gradually transformed in mind and affections according to the preceptive-will of God and
consequently into the image of Christ. At best, too often sanctification is merely seen
in terms of becoming truly Christ-like, and if truly Christ-like then truly
human (since Christ is the perfect image of God in man). Yet when speaking of
sanctification the New Testament speaks more in terms of a one-time break with
sin, a definitive act of
sanctification.In this light,
sanctification is more akin to effectual calling, justification and adoption -
a one-time act never to be repeated or undone. Indeed, that God will complete a progressive sanctifying
work in all his children should be a source of confidence and joy for every believer. Notwithstanding, we should expect that the
degree of understanding of God’s finished work of definitive sanctification in
the life of the believer will, to some extent, influence the attainment of progressive
sanctification in the experience of the believer. After all, to think Christ’s thoughts after
him, as we walk in him, includes thinking true thoughts about God’s work of
definitive sanctification. Moreover, to think wrongly about sanctification is
to “obey” in our sanctification not according to the truth of our sanctification.

At the very
heart of sanctification is life from the dead. The believer is delivered once
and for all from the bondage of sin and raised to walk in newness of life. In
that great familiar hymn, Charles Wesley put it this way: “Long
my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night; thine eye
diffused a quickening ray; I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; my chains
fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed thee...”

Is it not
true that he that is dead is freed from sin? Hasn’t the believer truly died
with Christ? Accordingly, as dead and raised in union with Christ, isn’t the
believer freed from sin and, therefore, no longer under its bondage and
dominion? Isn’t it true that the believer has been crucified with Christ and it
is no longer the believer who lives but Christ who lives in and through the
believer? Isn’t the very imperative not
to let sin reign in our mortal bodies premised upon the incongruity of what the
contrary contemplates, sin having reign over the believer’s body? Doesn’t the
incongruity presuppose the reality of resurrected life in union with Christ? Sure, sin indwells every believer, but the
truth of the matter is the believer is no longer in the flesh but in the
Spirit; so it is as the Westminster Divines rightly wrote, “…the saints grow in
grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.” Indwelling sin is not
enslaving sin, for the Christian is a
slave to Christ.

Falling into
the error of perfectionism is hardly a danger in Reformed circles, but what is
at risk is building a doctrine of sanctification upon personal experience, observation
and Christian testimony. I fear that sentimental
fundamentalism along with moralism has made its way into Reformed churches.“Being saved” is understood primarily in
terms of justification, which is all that God does; and we must do the rest.
After being justified, the believer must respond by living a moral life in gratitude for God’s saving work in
Christ, or so it is often told without remainder. To whip up devotion to God and his ways by
exciting gratitude for Christ’s atoning work on the cross, (even pity for the
Savior in Romanist and many Fundamentalist circles), is often what is preached as the impetus for living the Christian life.
Obligation to obey because of the Savior's sin bearing, life giving death upon the cross is all we have to move us. The very fact that every believer is a new creation in Christ
and as such actually desires to run in the ways of the Lord is not a reality
that is preached - if it is not also denied, at least implicitly. Devotion ends up becoming a
work of the flesh, a dead moralism as it were. It even can become that
which ultimately must cause one to differ from another, as there is little expectation
that the Spirit will cause every
believer both to will and to do of God’s good pleasure as he so determines. God actually inclining the wills of his subjects so that they desire to participate in his foreordination of good works in
the orbit of family, work, community and church is no longer in view. Sadly, it's
exchanged for man, in the flesh, determining the good works that God has
somehow mysteriously foreordained man to walk in through obligation, not sovereign transformation. In the end, it is we who determine our sanctification,
and lip-service is given to biblical Calvinism as it relates to the divine initiative and subduing grace.

When sheep are taught over and over again that they are slaves to sin and under its bondage, as little children they lose the joy of salvation and begin to believe there is no hope other than through the arm of the flesh. Moralism and legalism begin to set in, and eventually the weary are tempted to give up.
This is not good news. The self-effort and "good works" that once plagued the new convert, having been a source of robbing him
of the joy, wonder, awe and sheer profundity of his justification through faith alone, becomes an hindrance to enjoying and participating in God’s saving work in sanctification.
Justification and sanctification have been rent asunder as God is portrayed as being operative in the former, leaving the latter a matter of self-effort alone - a kind of saved by grace, kept by works - a despairing thought indeed. Have I gone too far? Well, note well that if God does not take the divine
initiative of causing the believer both to will and do of his good pleasure and, also, fulfill his promise of
completing a work of grace until the day of Jesus Christ, then the Christian is as alone
in his sanctification as he possibly can be. What must be grasped is that anything short of pure Reformed theology
in this regard is not the teaching of biblical sanctification. The message of grace should be so abundant - appear so one sided, that onlookers will mistake the truth for license to sin! "Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?"

So, where do we
go from here? Well, I think these are some starting points that the Christian
church might begin to regain in emphasis as opposed to what is widely found in
the evangelical church today…

1. More
preaching and teaching on union with Christ in election, incarnation, atonement,
resurrection, and ascension must take center stage.

2. A
realized eschatology – (e.g. God made us alive with Christ; God raised us with
Christ; God seated us in heavenly places with Christ -> i.e. “we have been
saved”)

3. The
divine intention to sum up all things (in heaven and earth) in Christ (i.e. the
eschatological and cosmic dimensions of God’s plan for the ages…)

4.
Salvation, not merely justification and conversion

5. Ministers must preach to the church, those in union with in Christ, not the supposed lost that might be members or attending.

6.
Inauguration & consummation (i.e. already not yet paradigm)

7. The
relationship of the imperative to the indicative must be regained, with the
indicative taking priority and laying the foundation for the imperative. (e.g.
Behave this way, because you are this person in Christ; the unity of the Spirit
exists, therefore, maintain it… as opposed to: create peace because Jesus died
for you…)